Safaricom, the dominant operator with nearly 70 percent of the market, cut its internet connection prices last month in response to Telkom’s aggressive positioning.
Telkom, 60 percent owned by London-based Helios Investment with the rest held by the government, had 4.1m users, about 9 percent of the market, as of July this year.
“We are now putting in place an aggressive market engagement campaign, to strengthen our push towards 5m customers and beyond,” Mareuse said.
He called on the regulator to ensure agents of Telkom’s mobile money service T-Kash could work with those of Safaricom’s M-Pesa platform on cash transfers and other transactions, to boost competition in the sector.
The two mobile money wallets were interlinked last week, allowing customers of either service to send money to each other seamlessly, but Mareuse said the agent and merchant integration networks were critical.
The integration of the two agent networks, together with those of Airtel’s financial service, is one of the recommendations contained in a draft study on competition, which Safaricom has objected to.